


Blunt Objects

by trumpetofdoom



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, The Wonders of Communication
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2020-11-27 03:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20941424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trumpetofdoom/pseuds/trumpetofdoom
Summary: The Heterodyne trilobites that many Mechanicsburgers carry with them are heavy and solid.The one Agatha wears... isn't.





	1. Some Disassembly Required

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a brief discussion on the Girl Genius fandom Discord, from back in July.
> 
> The first chapter went live as part of [Girl Genius Event "Week" 2019: Fics That Pass in the Night](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/GGEventWeek2019).

_The golden trilobite is the sign of the House of Heterodyne, rulers of Mechanicsburg for nearly fifty generations. Mechanicsburgers have long worn it in town, and with the Heterodyne Boys rising in both prominence and popularity, it became fashionable (and safer) to wear it in other cities as well. The versions available for purchase are typically made of one or two pieces of solid material, such as metal or rock, that has been painted gold, as the number in circulation would otherwise be enough to devalue gold as currency were they melted down. Vendors rarely draw attention to this, but the solidity and weight also enable the trilobite to be used as a blunt weapon in extremis or in self-defense._  
\- _A Traveler’s Guide to the Iconography and Citizenry of Eastern Europa_, 1870

* * *

“A pretty little townie like this, she’ll have a whole box of the stuff at home.” Omar was eyeing Agatha’s locket hungrily. “She’ll never miss a couple of small gifts to the deserving. And then... maybe she’ll let us show her just how nice we can be.”

Agatha was not what one might call wise to the ways of the world, but she recognized this as a bad situation and one in which she needed to defend herself. She glanced around to find something that she could use as a weapon, but the alley didn’t have much that would be useful. The barrels weren’t exactly throwable, after all, and the pipes were fixed in place. Maybe she could grab the bottle the other soldier was holding and try to hit Omar with it while he was still looking at her locket —

The locket! She’d seen Mechanicsburgers use their trilobites as self-defense weapons, and hers was probably heavier than the soldier’s bottle. If she could get a good, solid hit in on him, she might be able to get out and get to TPU in time.

“You want this?” she asked, ripping her locket off her throat and pulling it back behind her head. “Here you go!”

She took a swing at Omar’s face, expecting him to drop like a rock when she made contact. He seemed to be caught off guard enough that she could actually hit him, and she did, but he didn’t collapse.

Instead, the locket exploded into several different pieces, which scattered across the ground except for the one still in Agatha’s hand. She and the two soldiers all stared at it in shock for a few seconds.

The other soldier recovered first. “That noise is gonna draw attention,” he muttered, grabbing Omar’s arm and pulling him out toward the far end of the alley. “Time to go.”

Agatha looked at the pieces for a moment longer, still stunned, before realizing she should probably pick them up. Her uncle had wanted her to always wear her locket, after all, and even if it was broken, it could be put back together, right?

As she grabbed her glasses and put the locket pieces (including a couple of loose gears) into a pocket of her coat, the main clock started to sound. “Oh no! I’m late!” she cried, and started running to the university.

* * *

“Mademoiselle Clay?” said Dr. Glassvitch. “You’re late.”

“I KNOW!” screamed Agatha. Dr. Glassvitch was at least the fifth person to inform her of this, and she really didn’t need to hear it from anyone else.

“You’re only a little late,” he said placatingly.

“Do you think you could help me put my locket back together?” Agatha asked, still a bit emotional from her panicked run in. “I broke it open on the head of a mugger this morning and it has more pieces than I think they normally have and before my uncle went away he made me promise never to take it off but I needed to defend myself and—” She could feel a headache approaching, and her hand flew up to her temple.

“Breathe, Agatha,” said Dr. Glassvitch quickly, having seen Agatha’s headaches enough times to want to try something to help her. “Do you want to try it yourself?”

“Well, perhaps,” Agatha said, still slightly distracted. “I’ve never built anything that worked myself, but if this is just reassembling something, it should be easier...” She walked over to one of the workbenches and began removing the remains of the locket from her coat pocket.

“Oui,” said Dr. Glassvitch. “If you have all the pieces, we should be able to see how they combine.”

“Don’t bother.” Agatha and Dr. Glassvitch looked up at the lab door to see Dr. Merlot standing there. “I don’t know why you encourage her, Glassvitch, but we have more pressing problems.”

“Problems?” asked Dr. Glassvitch.

“Baron Wulfenbach is here.”

* * *

Both in terms of scientific and engineering skills and of political clout, Baron Klaus Wulfenbach was the most powerful Spark between the Rhine and the Urals. Nobody wanted to get on his bad side, and those who did tended to quickly realize the error of their ways. So Dr. Merlot’s announcement that the Baron was arriving _today_, weeks ahead of schedule, set the whole lab into a tizzy. Agatha had barely been able to hide all the preexisting debris by the time the professors returned, and only had a mild headache to show for it.

“And this,” said Dr. Beetle, finishing up introductions to the Baron, “is our lab assistant, Miss Clay.”

The Baron glanced over at the windowsill, where Agatha’s locket had been relocated to and lay in pieces with the paintings visible, and walked over to take a closer look. “Whose is this?” he idly asked, indicating the pile of parts.

“Oh, that’s mine, Herr Baron,” Agatha said shyly. “I haven’t had a chance to put it back together, but I’m quite attached to it. It has the only pictures of my parents, you see.”

In the silence that ensued, one could almost hear a gear slip in Klaus Wulfenbach’s head as it tilted to one side. “Say that again?” he eventually asked.

“My parents?” Agatha sounded uncertain what exactly the Baron wanted her to repeat, but that was a reasonable guess.

The Baron nodded. “And who provided them to you?”

“Klaus, I don’t see the relevance—” Dr. Beetle attempted to protest.

“My uncle Barry painted them,” said Agatha.

What Baron Wulfenbach might have said in response to _this_ bombshell, we can only speculate, as Dr. Beetle took the opportunity to turn to his assistant and ask, “What happened to your locket?”

“I broke it on the head of a mugger, sir,” said Agatha. “There was an electrical anomaly of some sort and I was accosted while trying to get away. I thought I could use it for self-defense.”

“Did it work?” The Baron’s question was quiet, but perfectly audible. If one didn’t know better, one might almost think they could see the shadow of a grin on his face, as if recalling happier times with better company.

Agatha briefly considered the question. “For certain values of ‘work,’ Herr Baron. It successfully prevented him from robbing me, if that’s what you mean, sir.”

“And you say you saw the event?” the Baron asked, completely ignoring Dr. Beetle’s frantic attempts to get Agatha out of the room.

Agatha nodded. “Yes, Herr Baron. I was right in the middle of it.”

“Stay. When this is over, I will want to talk to you,” he said.

Dr. Beetle made one last attempt to release Agatha from this order, but the Baron shut down that line of conversation and turned to Drs. Merlot and Glassvitch to ask them why the Dihoxulator wasn’t finished yet.

* * *

Many things have been said about Klaus Wulfenbach over the years. Some of them are even true. He was a powerful Spark, he was ruthless when provoked, but he could take a joke at his expense (and was secretly disappointed at how few people ever tried to make such jokes to his face) and he took a hands-off approach to governance when possible.

One quality that has frequently gone unnoticed or unremarked upon, however, is his ability to multitask, and to ponder multiple problems at once. During his travels with the Heterodyne Boys, it would have been fair to call him an unsung hero for the number of times he provided Bill or Barry with solutions to three problems they hadn’t been considering because they were focused on something slightly more immediate. If Bill was working on how to shut down the generator powering the madboy’s death ray, Klaus was preparing countermeasures for the monsters whose cages were shut with magnetic locks and contemplating how to keep the vat of boiling acid from tipping over. If Barry was trying to distract the rampaging clank, Klaus was removing the civilians from the line of fire and getting any potential sources of fuel out of the way. And when he turned his talents to empire management (not entirely intentionally), he could easily consider multiple administrative problems at once, pondering how to placate both the Grand Duchy of Orchnik and the Kingdom of Holfung-Borzoi while also planning the punishment of the province of Poictesme for failing to turn in Othertech and actually holding a conversation with the Jägergenerals.

The pictures of Bill Heterodyne and Lucrezia Mongfish in the broken locket on the windowsill hadn’t initially registered as out of the ordinary to Klaus. It wasn’t uncommon for Mechanicsburgers to carry an image of the reigning Heterodyne on them, especially not within a Heterodyne trilobite sigil, and Bill currently held that post _in absentia_. Likewise, Heterodyne Boys fans might carry a picture of Bill or Barry to symbolize their support of the ideals they felt the Boys represented. The Heterodyne’s wife was a somewhat common (though by no means standard, especially not during times when the House of Heterodyne’s marital policy was “why choose just one?”) companion picture to that of the Heterodyne himself, which could have explained Lucrezia’s presence within the locket. Klaus had been prepared to write it off as just some random Mechanicsburger and leave it at that. But someone claiming that they were her _parents_ was enough of a shock to disrupt all of his thought processes at once.

As Miss “Clay” talked to Beetle, Klaus took a longer look at her. Now that he had an idea what to look for, he could definitely see some of both her presumed parents in her: Lucrezia’s green eyes and blonde hair, Bill’s mouth and general facial structure. Her statement that she had seen that morning’s electrical event on the Street of the Cheesemongers gave him a perfect excuse to speak with her later, and as he questioned the professors on why the Dihoxulator remained incomplete and set Gilgamesh to trying to figure out the problem, he was also looking forward to figuring out where this girl had been all this time, if she was the real thing.

So when a familiar fluctuating pitch filled the room, Klaus took a mental note of it as being another point in favor of the heritage she had (unwittingly?) claimed. And when Silas Merlot snapped at the hidden Heterodyne to “stop that infernal humming,” Klaus didn’t react outwardly. But only a fool would think that his lack of reaction meant that he hadn’t noticed.

Which of course meant that it was a mistake that had been made by far too many Sparks, wannabe Sparks, and prospective town conquerors over the years, but nobody ever said smart people couldn’t be idiots. Klaus just hoped to delay the day he was counted among that number as long as possible.

* * *

“Miss Clay — get out! Henceforth you are banned from this university. Forever!” Dr. Merlot declared.

Agatha was stunned. “You... you can’t do that! I’m a student and—”

“Of course I can do it!” Merlot roared. “Haven’t you heard? I’m in charge now!”

“Miss Clay,” the Baron interrupted, “we do still need to talk. Please, allow me to escort you home.”

Agatha glared daggers at him, but recognized the command for what it was. And if she was being honest, having someone to keep her safe on the way home did seem like a good idea. Without a word, she went to the window and began putting the locket pieces back into her pocket.

“Boris,” said the Baron, “I trust you and Gilgamesh can handle the administrative side of things. If he makes any particularly poor decisions, you have my permission to overrule him.”

“Very good, Herr Baron,” the four-armed secretary replied.

The Baron turned to the Jäger Unit Commander. “Come with us.”

“Yah, Herr Baron,” replied the Jägermonster.

By this time, Agatha had finished gathering the locket pieces and was ready to leave. She walked to the lab door, and the Jäger fell in behind her and the Baron.

As Agatha crossed the university campus, she could see that Dr. Beetle’s “Unstoppable Army” had fared about as well as a fighting force could be expected to fare against a version that had had thirty years to find its flaws and improve on them. Which was to say, not well at all. Even Mr. Tock, the icon of Beetleburg for as long as Agatha could remember, was destroyed and burning, its arms being removed from its body by Wulfenbach work crews as she watched.

“Goodbye, Mr. Tock,” she whispered as she passed through the university’s main gate.

A Wulfenbach clank appeared to notice her, then notice something behind her, and continued on its way. Agatha could clearly hear the footsteps of the Baron and the Jägermonster behind her as she began to set off for home.

“Miss Clay,” the Baron said, “I would like you to tell me about the electrical anomaly you saw this morning. Any information you can provide would be helpful.”

Agatha did not change course, slow down, or look back at the man who was responsible for the death of her mentor, employer and protector.

“You’re still mad at me over Dr. Beetle’s death,” said the Baron.

Agatha continued to not acknowledge that he was talking to her.

The Baron sighed. “Tarsus Beetle was a teaching assistant when I was a student here. I had him for multiple classes, and he and I got along well. I did not come here today with the intent to kill him; in fact, you might have seen that I was trying to _avoid_ killing him. But you saw the hive engine. Had he reported it to me immediately, that would have been fine. Had he asked to be on the research team, I would have let him. But he tried to hide it from me, and that means he intended to do something with it that he didn’t want anyone else to know about. I assume he thought he had some way of controlling them, but even if he did have one, that doesn’t actually make it any less of a crime. And the bomb he threw would have killed you if it had landed where he was aiming.”

He paused briefly.

“And I do regret his death.” His voice had softened some. Not actually any quieter, perhaps, but less powerful. “But do you think he was the first former friend I’ve had to come down on? Or even the tenth? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve thought someone I knew was responsible enough to run a town, only for them to do something I thought for sure they knew better than to do. I don’t have the energy to spare to feel bad about someone who, frankly, should have known the risks and decided to do something stupid anyway. Just once, I’d like to have an ally that I can trust unconditionally, like in the old days. Is that too much to ask?”

Agatha suspected those last two sentences hadn't really been meant for her hearing. She turned what the Baron had said over in her head as she walked. She’d always thought of him as this larger-than-life figure who ruled half the continent and had been practically unstoppable since his return, but just now, he’d sounded...

Well, he’d sounded human.

“It started with sparks,” she eventually muttered.

“Hm?”

“The anomaly.” Agatha forced herself to look at the Baron. If she was going to be talking to him, she should at least be that level of polite. “Electrical sparks, coming off exposed metal. There must have been some electrostatic build-up that I didn’t notice at first, but I felt it when my glasses zapped me.”

The Baron nodded. “And then?”

“And then...” Agatha thought about it for a moment. “...sort of a hole in the air? No, that’s not quite right. It had clean, straight edges, even if they were electrically charged. Almost maybe more of a window? Anyway, it just appeared out of nowhere, and in it, I saw a figure point at me”—Agatha cast her left arm out to demonstrate—“and heard a voice saying, ‘—LIKE THAT?’ as if it were in the middle of a sentence.”

The Baron nodded. “Could you describe the figure for me?”

“Human-shaped, at least the parts that I could see,” Agatha said, “but mostly mechanical. The hand and arm were, at least, and its hair looked like... cabling? I couldn’t see much else, it was wearing something that hid its shape.”

“And the voice?”

“From the little I heard of it, I’d have to say it was also synthetic, but possibly human-derived. I’d never heard anything quite like it. I want to say there was an echo that was coming from the apparition, but I might have imagined that.”

“I see,” said the Baron. “And then what?”

“And then I panicked,” said Agatha, “and ran away from it into an alleyway, where a couple of soldiers tried to rob me.”

“And you hit them with your locket, breaking it into several pieces,” the Baron finished. “I don’t suppose you saw what happened to the apparition afterwards?”

Agatha shook her head. “I’m sorry, Herr Baron, no.”

“That is mildly inconvenient,” the Baron said, “but I’m sure someone else saw it. Speaking of your locket, once we get you home, I might be willing to help you reassemble it.”

“Why?” Agatha tried not to let her surprise show and was only partially successful.

“It is rare that I get the opportunity to actually indulge my Spark, and your locket appears to have had several more parts than a normal one. Either it will go quickly, or it will be an interesting challenge. It would not require me to go farther out of my way than I already am, and it sounds like you could use someone doing something kind for you today.”

Agatha suspected that the Baron wasn’t giving all of his reasons, but let it go.

“Where are we going, by the way?” the Baron asked.

“Um, Clay Mechanical,” Agatha answered. “It’s on Forge Street. I think it used to be a stable at one point?”

The Baron appeared to think about this for a moment. “The place that used to be Ilionescu’s?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Adam and Lilith were established here before they adopted me.”

“Across the street from the turnip shop?”

Agatha stopped in incredulity. “How long has that place _been_ there?”

Everyone knew the Baron never smiled, but one could perhaps be forgiven for thinking he might have done so here. Or at least, Agatha hoped one could. “Turnips R Us! has been a Beetleburg institution since before I was a student here, Miss Clay. The owner is a minor Spark, good at what she does, but very specialized. I’m certain that she is over eighty by now, and I believe she’s preparing one of her grandchildren to take over for her. Old Ilionescu did some decent business supplying horses for TPU field excursions, so I had reason to visit multiple times.” The Baron started walking again, and Agatha had to hurry to catch up. “I know more or less where we’re going, but I am willing to let you take the lead should you so desire.”

“If you know where we’re going,” Agatha said, “then you know we don’t actually have a whole lot farther to go.” She noticed that she’d drawn even with the Baron, with the Jägermonster bringing up the rear, and settled into that position.

It felt right, somehow.

They turned onto Forge Street in silence.

“Miss Clay,” the Baron said at last, “when my son was examining the Dihoxulator, Dr. Merlot told you to ‘stop that infernal humming.’ Do you remember that?”

“Yes, Herr Baron,” Agatha said.

“Were you aware, at the time, that you were humming?”

“No.”

“Did you feel anything unusual before he told you to stop?”

Agatha had to think about this one for a moment. “A little bit, yes. It felt like I could think better than usual, and I could tell something wasn’t quite right with the machine.”

“Do you think you could do it again?”

“Herr Baron, I’m not sure what I _did_ in the first place,” Agatha said.

“Fair enough,” the Baron acknowledged. “Miss Clay, the particular hum you were producing is very rare. In fact, you are only the third person I have ever known to be able to do it.”

“If I may ask,” Agatha asked, “who are the other two?”

The Baron took a deep breath as if to gather his thoughts. “They were two men born into a house that was as revered within their hometown as reviled outside its walls. Two men who took it upon themselves to redeem their family name, and by all accounts succeeded. Two men who traveled not only the continent but the world, righting wrongs wherever they found them, not for glory or personal gain, but for no other reason than that it needed doing. They were the two best friends I ever had, and the two best men I’ve ever known.” He looked down and met Agatha’s eyes. “And if what you’ve told me about that locket is true, one of them was your father and the other one was your uncle.”

Agatha could feel her eyes widening. “Are you seriously telling me that my father was—”

“Perhaps we should have the rest of this conversation inside?” the Baron suggested, with a meaningful look at the Clays’ house door, at which they had just arrived.

“Oh! Right, of course...” Agatha reached into her coat pocket, fumbled around for a few seconds, fished out her key, and unlocked the door. Within seconds she, the Baron, and the Jägermonster were all inside, and the Jägermonster closed the door behind them.


	2. Clearing the Heir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus stumbles across some old friends who are less happy to see him than he is to see them.

_Trying to find Punch and Judy, the Boys’ longtime companions, as a lead on the Boys themselves runs into a similar problem to trying to find the Boys directly: namely, that no one is confirmed to have seen them in well over a decade. In fact, the two constructs vanished from the public eye even before the Other’s attack on Castle Heterodyne sixteen years ago._

_This does not necessarily mean that they would have no knowledge of Bill or Barry’s whereabouts, though it does make it unlikely. Beyond that, however, lies another problem. Very little is actually known about Punch and Judy. We can take it as truth that they were early creations of the Heterodyne Boys, perhaps even their breakthrough projects, and it is generally accepted that they were patchworks, but neither of those details provides enough information to conclusively identify them; and any further information one might think to have about them likely comes from the Heterodyne Boys novels and plays, which have never been known to concern themselves with prioritizing factual accuracy over entertainment value._

\- “In Search of the Heterodyne Boys”, _Stockholm Daily News_, Friday, August 23, 1889 

* * *

As soon as the door to the house attached to Clay Mechanical closed, the daughter turned to Baron Klaus Wulfenbach and asked, still slightly incredulous, “Are you actually telling me that you think my father was one of the Heterodyne Boys?” 

“I am,” said Klaus. “From what you’ve told me, it sounds like your father was Bill Heterodyne and your mother was Lucrezia Mongfish. It’s certainly their portraits in your locket.” 

“And my Uncle Barry—” 

“Was _that_ Barry, yes.” Klaus and Jorgi, the Jäger he’d brought along, followed her from the entryway into a living room with a coffee table, a sofa, a few chairs, and in the far left corner, a piano. If Klaus remembered the layout from the last time he’d visited the stable as a student, one of the doors on the right led to the shop floor, the kitchen was off to the left, and the bedrooms were through the door on the back wall and up the stairs. “Which also means you are almost guaranteed to be a Spark.” 

“What? I’ve never built anything that works, how do you figure I’d be a Spark?” 

“Your mother was a strong Spark. Your father was a strong Spark, and not only that, a Heterodyne. To the extent that it can be predicted, that is probably the single best positive indicator short of actual breakthrough. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised you haven’t broken through yet, but if you’re heterodyning, it should be soon.” He saw the look of inquiry on the girl’s face and added, “That hum.” 

“I don’t — this is a lot to take in,” she said. “Are you sure?” 

“As sure as I can be,” said Klaus. “But they’re not here, which means that the next question is: Who did they trust enough to leave you with?” 

“That’s a good question—” she started to say. 

“Agatha?” a voice called out from the kitchen area. Female, and more than a little familiar, but Klaus couldn’t _quite_ place it. “You’re home early. Did something happen?” 

“You could say that, Lilith,” the now-named Agatha replied. 

“Oh, dear. What was—” The voice’s owner appeared in the doorway on the left, and Klaus was suddenly hit with the feeling of having seen a ghost. 

Judy looked about as shocked as Klaus felt, though, so at least he wasn’t alone. 

“Judy?” he asked. “It’s great to see a friend again. I...” Judy didn’t look nearly as pleased to see him as he was to see her, if anything she looked panicked for some reason, but— 

“Oh, of course.” The undertone of Sparky frustration in Agatha’s voice immediately drew the attention of everyone else in the room. “Of _course_ the construct guardians that my uncle _Barry Heterodyne_ left me with are Punch and Judy. Why am I even surprised at this point? It’s not like we never joked about it! I guess two world-shattering revelations before noon weren’t enough! I really would have loved to know before I left the house this morning that this was going to be the most important day of my life! What’s next, am I going to learn — ah!” Her left hand flew up to her temple as she winced in pain, cutting off the rant that had been building up a full head of steam. 

Judy immediately hurried over to Agatha and helped her to a seat on the sofa. Punch, who had entered while Agatha was ranting, had glanced over to Jorgi and held up two fingers, concern and confusion evident on his face. 

“Beetle,” Jorgi said quietly, in answer to the unvoiced question. “Tell hyu later, yah?” This did not appear to fully satisfy Punch, but the knowledge that an explanation would be forthcoming seemed to be enough for him for the time being. 

“So,” Judy said, “who told you?” 

Agatha gestured at Klaus. “He did.” 

Klaus gestured back at Agatha. “She did.” Agatha shot him a weak, pained glare, and he continued, “Though I don’t think she knew she was doing it at the time. The smoking gun came when I heard her heterodyning.” 

Judy looked up at him. “You heard—” She cut herself off and looked back down at her charge’s unadorned neck. “Agatha, where is your locket?” 

“In here,” Agatha grit out, tapping the appropriate pocket of her greatcoat, “in several pieces, after I broke it open defending myself from a mugging this morning.” She took a deep breath, perhaps to try to further settle a headache, and added, “Baron Wulfenbach here has _graciously offered_ to help me put it back together.” 

Judy looked between Agatha and Klaus. “Has he.” 

“He haz,” Jorgi offered. “Hy vas dere.” He took a few steps toward the sofa, stopping when Judy tensed up and Punch started moving to cut him off. “Easy, easy! Hy iz not gunna hurt her! But hy do need to check zumting.” 

“Which is?” Judy asked, in a tone that promised that if she didn’t like Jorgi’s answer, it would not end well for him. 

“Mizz Agatha,” Jorgi said, “vould hyu please giff me your hand?” 

“All right,” Agatha said slowly. She took off her jacket, laying it across the back of the sofa, and reached out her hand, apparently deciding that she trusted this unknown Jäger more than her foster mother did. 

Jorgi gently took her hand, lifted it to his face, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath in through his nose. He let it out, released Agatha, opened his eyes, and said to her, “Yah, hyu iz a Heterodyne, all right. Vhich means,” and here Jorgi raised his voice a bit, “dot hy iz svorn to serve und protect hyu, und if hy get orders from hyu dot are different from de vunz hy get from de Baron, hy listen to hyu, not to him.” 

This statement, though still directed to Agatha, was clearly intended for everyone in the room, and Punch and Judy both visibly relaxed. The pair of constructs were still tense, but they weren’t openly worried about the Jäger anymore. 

Which meant they were still worried about Klaus. And he didn’t know why. 

“Were you ever planning to tell me?” Agatha asked Judy. 

Judy and Punch shared a brief look. “We were hoping that your uncle would be around to tell you when the time came,” Judy eventually said. 

Agatha was unimpressed. “It’s been eleven years since Uncle Barry left, close to ten since his last letter. I’d think that if he were able to come back, he would have by now. Did he at least tell you where he was going, or what he was trying to do?” 

This time the worried look that passed between Punch and Judy was longer, and included glances at Klaus. 

“Lilith,” Agatha asked, “what’s got you and Adam so on edge, and how is the Baron involved?” 

“I’d rather like to know that myself,” said Klaus. “Last time I checked, we were still on good terms, and I don’t recall any specific interaction that should have changed that. For that matter, why didn’t Barry come and talk to me, if he was here eleven years ago?” Castle Wulfenbach had gotten somewhat slower as it grew, but it had never exactly been known as a fast airship (though its actual top speed was a highly classified secret, and significantly higher than most people believed). If Barry Heterodyne had wanted to find Klaus after his return to the continent, it wouldn’t have been hard. 

“You mean to say you don’t know?” Judy asked, disbelief clear in her voice. 

“Let us assume for the moment that I am utterly baffled and cannot conceive of what might possibly have been running through his head.” 

Judy clearly wanted to be doing _anything else_ right now but answering Klaus’s question, but it was equally clear as she looked around the room that this conversation would not proceed until someone did and that she was the only person present who could. “Barry told us,” she said at last, meeting Klaus’s gaze, “that you were in league with the Other.” 

...Well, that answered a few questions. Raised several others, though. 

“What? No! Red fire, why did he think that?” As the words came out of his mouth, Klaus felt a brief moment of kinship with the Heterodyne girl, who had also been on the receiving end of multiple unknown unknowns today, some more welcome than others. “How could he — did he at least tell you why?” 

“I can see how _a person_ could have come to that conclusion.” Again, all eyes turned to Agatha, who this time seemed a bit more aware of the attention. She hesitated, but continued, “You were conspicuously absent the entire time the Other was active and for a few years before. The Other’s first attack involved kidnapping Lucrezia Mongfish — my mother? That’s going to take some getting used to — and everyone knows that you and she had a thing for a while. And when you got back, you started taking over a continent that had been pretty well softened up. It’s all circumstantial, sure, and maybe it shouldn’t have been enough for him, but you did have a potential motive, means and opportunity.” Agatha paused for a moment, then added, “Actually, now that I say it out loud, I can see how someone might think that you _were_ the Other, Herr Baron.” 

“Hoy, dot’s a rumor ve hear effry now und den,” Jorgi muttered. “Ve’z fought de vasps enuff dot ve don’t believe it, but pipple still say it vhere dey don’t tink ve ken hear.” 

Klaus had taken this opportunity to settle his thoughts, and looked at Punch and Judy. “On the one hand, I can understand assuming Barry knew what he was talking about, because he usually did. On the other, I’d have thought you two of all people would know that Barry wasn’t always perfect, and I thought you knew me better than that. I am _not_ in league with the Other, and I never have been.” 

“Then what were you doing while you were gone?” Klaus couldn’t name the last time he’d heard Judy raise her voice in anger. “Barry didn’t _want_ to believe that you were helping the Other’s plans, but you haven’t exactly volunteered an alternative explanation! What were we supposed to think?” 

Klaus opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. “You’re right, I haven’t. But I suppose you two are safe to tell and deserve to know.” 

Punch and Judy glanced at each other and tensed up. Jorgi was suddenly very fascinated by the wallpaper, and Agatha began rummaging through the coat pocket that she had swept her locket pieces into and pulling them out to set on the table. 

“Do you know why I vanished?” Klaus asked. “Does anyone?” 

“The popular theory,” Agatha said, not looking up, “is that you left because Lucrezia chose Bill, that you went off to nurse a broken heart.” Apparently she wasn’t actually going to pretend not to listen to this part of the conversation. Well, Heterodynes never had much use for other people’s rules. 

Klaus grunted. “From a certain point of view, that is partially correct. Lucrezia unilaterally decided that she needed me to be as far away as possible. So the night after Bill proposed to her, she and I spent one last night together. Then she drugged me into unconsciousness. When I woke up, I was in Skifander, nursing a massive headache and very disappointed in myself.” 

“Skifander? That’s out of the way, all right,” said Judy. “But I seem to recall that you liked it there when you visited with the Boys.” 

“You’re right, I did. And Zanta and I were very happy to see each other again.” Klaus smiled faintly at the memory. 

“Then why did you...” Judy trailed off as she glanced over at Punch, who was rocking an imaginary baby in his massive arms. “That’s right, I _know_ you didn’t have a son before your disappearance. And the one you have is old enough that he must have been born before you came back.” 

“And Skifander would have been fine with him, if not for the daughter that we also had at the same time.” 

Judy winced. “I begin to see.” 

“Under the circumstances, I felt that it would be best for everyone if Gilgamesh and I were somewhere else. As I remembered it, Europa was a relatively safe place thanks to the Boys’ efforts, and so it would be somewhere I could raise my son in relative peace. Unfortunately, when we went back through the portal I assumed I had been sent through to get to Skifander, it spat us out somewhere that I eventually learned was the mountains of South America. From there, it took about five years to get back to Europa, by which time things here were as bad as I had ever seen them. I hadn’t thought things could crater that far in only a few years... er, so to speak.” 

“And so you, what, decided that just cleaning up your own lands wasn’t good enough for you?” Judy still sounded skeptical. 

“It wasn’t good enough for Bill or Barry back when we were traveling together.” Out of the corner of his eye, Klaus saw Punch concede the point. “But I’ve never had their silver tongue. As far as I could tell, the only thing most of these idiot Sparks and arrogant nobles respect is force, so if I had to bust some heads, well, so be it. That, I can do very well.” 

“But you weren’t trying to help the Other in any way?” 

“No! Judy, I came to Beetleburg today because Beetle was trying to hide a hive engine from me, in direct defiance of the only rule I set for him! I don’t trust anyone with the Other’s tools, and I certainly wouldn’t use them myself!” 

“And if we told you that the Other was Lucrezia, would you still be singing that tune?” 

“Absolutely! I—” Then the first part of Judy’s last sentence caught up with Klaus’s brain. “—wait, what?” 

Judy herself appeared to be realizing one or two things that had come out in this conversation. “Actually, can we back up a bit? Beetle had a hive engine? Since when?” 

“Two weeks ago, and he’d been keeping it on the university campus.” Klaus didn’t think he’d quite succeeded in keeping his voice calm and collected, but at least this anger wasn’t caused by anyone currently in the room. “I don’t know exactly what he intended to do with it, but I am fairly certain neither you nor I would have liked it, whatever it was.” 

Judy turned to her foster daughter. “Agatha, did you know about this?” 

“Not until today.” Agatha was a bit shaken herself. “Seriously? My mother was—?” 

“Hy ken see it.” Jorgi gently laid a hand on Agatha’s shoulder. “De Lady Lucrezia vos... not a goot person.” 

“Whatever happened to never speaking ill of the dead?” Klaus murmured. 

“If de ded mind, iz not my problem. Dey should heff been better pipple ven dey voz alive,” Jorgi replied, with the sanguinity of someone for whom death was a fact of life and likely would be for a long time yet. 

“_Is_ she dead?” Agatha asked. “The Other stopped attacking after a while, I’d think that would mean something... right?” she added. Clearly, it had no more escaped her notice than it had Klaus’s that the conversation was making Judy highly uncomfortable again. 

Judy hesitated before saying, “I wish I could give you a definite answer. Your uncle didn’t sound convinced that she was gone, but...” 

“What did he say?” asked Klaus. 

Judy looked at him. “Barry told us that Lucrezia told him and Bill that she wasn’t working alone, that she had associates helping her with her plan.” 

Klaus nodded. “I can believe that.” A part of him began to ponder whom she might have meant. 

“He also said,” Judy continued, “that she had indicated you were one of them, though I don’t recall if he ever quoted her exact wording.” 

“And he believed her?” Klaus’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “Even when I was sharing her bed, ‘trustworthy’ was not a word I would ever have used to describe her. I really thought Barry was smarter than that.” 

Judy shrugged helplessly. “He didn’t say anything at all when I asked about why he hadn’t come back with Bill.” 

“Did he have anything to say about what her plan actually was?” 

“Your guess is as good as mine as to what her end goal was. But he was sure that Agatha was in real danger from it, and even if you personally are not helping Lucrezia, I can’t imagine that danger has gone away in the last ten years.” 

“So you’re telling me,” said Agatha, who by this time had finished putting her locket pieces on the table, “that not only am I the daughter of one of the Heterodyne Boys, not only am I a probable Spark with a potentially very imminent breakthrough, not only have I been raised by _the_ Punch and Judy for the last twelve or so years, _not only_ have my foster parents been trying to hide from a longtime friend of theirs for that entire time based on information that was either incorrect or incomplete, but also that my biological mother was directly responsible for the worst war in recent history, that she may very well have been directly responsible for the _hive engine_ that the ruler of this town was keeping for the past two weeks unknown to the rest of us — the revelation of which began a chain of events that led to said ruler’s permanent death and my expulsion from TPU — and that she wanted to do something unspecified but unpleasant to me in particular and we cannot confirm that she’s not still able to do it, nor that someone won’t try to do it on her behalf.” She shook her head in disbelief. “This day began with an attempted mugging and has not indisputably improved from there.” 

Nobody said anything, but the general mood of the silence was _yeah, that sounds about right_. 

“Okay then.” Agatha stood up from the sofa. “I’m going to go take a nap,” she declared. “Hopefully this will all make sense when I wake up. In the meantime, please keep the noise down to a dull roar and try not to kill each other.” 

With that, she turned and walked through the door that led to the bedrooms. 

The moment was eventually broken, as all moments must be. In this instance, it was broken by Jorgi taking five steps and assuming a guard position right in front of the door. “Hy iz just gunna stand right here, yah?” he said, facing the rest of the room and crossing his arms as if daring anyone to try to get past him to his new Heterodyne. 

Judy turned back to Klaus. “Expelled?” she asked. 

“After Beetle got himself killed, I declared Merlot in charge,” said Klaus. 

Judy rolled her unevenly-sized eyes and nodded. “That would do it.” 

Klaus sat down on the sofa, near the section of the coffee table on which all of the locket parts had been laid out, and for the first time allowed the full weight of fifteen years of reluctant empire-building to settle on him. “Judy,” he asked, “what _happened_ while I was gone? I’ve read all the accounts, I saw what Wulfenbach looked like when I got back, but I didn’t live it the way you did.” 

“It was chaos,” said Judy, and maybe there was a bit more weight of years in her voice, too. “Chaos and terror. Well, the first few years were relatively quiet. We’d retired and moved here to Beetleburg not too long after the wedding, so we weren’t around for the attack on Castle Heterodyne, but we heard that the Masters went off to go deal with whomever had done it.” 

“Not so detached from the Old Heterodynes as to not go after any threat to what they saw as theirs?” Klaus said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of emotion on Jorgi’s face that might have been pain, but it was gone too quickly to say for sure. 

“I think it’s fair to say it was more than a threat, but yes,” Judy said. “When Master Bill came back from whatever problem he and Master Barry had been off dealing with and found his home in ruins, his wife missing, and his thirteen-month-old son dead, he was by all accounts extremely distraught.” 

“I can imagine. What’s this about a son?” 

Judy looked a bit surprised at this. “Oh, nobody told you? Yes, Klaus Barry Heterodyne was Bill and Lucrezia’s firstborn. I’m told they rang the Doom Bell and everything.” She glanced down to the table, then back at Klaus. “I see you looking at the locket there. If I let you play with it, are you still going to listen to me?” 

“Of course I am. We knew each other for how long?” Klaus began reorganizing the parts to try to get a better sense of what he was seeing. 

“Of course,” Judy echoed. “Anyway, the first attack was awful, but when there hadn’t been any others for five or six months, we thought maybe it was an isolated incident, maybe they’d found the culprit and shown him the error of his ways. The second and third attacks hit within about a day of each other, and that was what really pushed it from a tragedy to a crisis. And it didn’t help that no one knew why it was happening, or who was doing it.” 

“Surely somebody had some ideas?” The gears that had been in the locket were unusually small, and a few springs appeared to have been bent. Klaus took a small toolkit out of a pocket of his greatcoat, opened it, and picked up a pair of pliers to try to straighten the bent springs. 

“I’m fairly certain ‘it was actually Lucrezia Mongfish all along’ was not at any time proposed as a serious theory,” Judy observed. “If anybody knew it was her, they were probably in on it. Beyond that? Lots of people had ideas. More often than not, when people agreed that any given Spark was the most likely remaining suspect, that Spark would be the next one that the Other attacked.” 

Klaus nodded. That tracked with what he’d heard after his return. “I’ve seen Barry make some really clever devices over the years, but the intricacy of this one outdoes them all. What on Earth was he going for?” 

“I know he told Agatha it was for her protection,” Judy said, switching conversational topics without batting an eye. People who had worked with Klaus for extended periods tended to get used to having multiple conversations with him in parallel. “By the time he brought her to us, there had been rumors for a couple of years of Spark girls going missing, and they haven’t really dropped off in the decade-plus since then.” 

“Don’t I know it,” muttered Klaus. “It is extremely frustrating to repeatedly arrive with an employment offer and find out that the person you’re trying to hire has vanished without a trace.” 

“Does anyone ever actually turn down your ‘employment offers’?” 

“It’s rare, but it does happen sometimes. It’s disappointing, but as long as they’re not doing anything illegal, I wish them well and tell them not to cause trouble. What were Bill and Barry doing during the attacks?” 

“Usually, helping out with the cleanup afterwards. I’m sure they’d have appreciated any assistance you could have given.” 

“If it weren’t for the giant wall of fire across the Atlantic that went up while I was gone, I’d have been back much sooner,” Klaus grumbled. “I’d made it all the way to Bermuda before I found out that I’d have to go the long way to get back, and island-hopping across the Pacific with a three-year-old in tow is even harder than doing it without one. Did they ever ask you to help?” 

Judy shook her head. “No, they didn’t. Barry told us afterwards that they’d been trying to respect our retirement, but I—” 

Klaus held up a hand for silence. At Judy’s questioning look, his eyes flicked towards the bedrooms. “Do you hear that?” he asked quietly. The unmistakable sound of heterodyning was coming from upstairs, though attenuated by the walls. 

Punch and Judy listened for a moment, then nodded. 

Klaus noticed a slight buzzing coming from the table. He looked down and saw that the locket was vibrating, and a quick further inspection showed that it was specifically a set of tiny tuning forks that were humming. He lifted the locket to his ear and discovered that the pitch the locket was creating fluctuated similarly to the classic Heterodyne hum, but different enough that he could imagine it being disruptive. 

Punch snapped his fingers to get Klaus’s attention and tapped his throat a couple of times. 

“That’s right, it would sit right on the larynx,” Klaus murmured. “And it’s only reacted to heterodyning thus far. Perhaps it was specifically geared for it—” He cut himself off and looked at Punch and Judy. “Barry left eleven years ago. How old was Agatha when he made this for her?” 

Punch held up one hand and extended all five fingers. Then he waggled those fingers a couple of times to get the point across. 

“_Five?_” Klaus was still trying to stay quiet, but wasn’t managing much softer than a stage whisper. “That’s unprecedented!” 

Judy nodded. “You see why he might have wanted to hide her from everyone, not just you.” 

Jorgi moved out of the doorway, allowing Agatha to re-enter the room. She was clearly sleepwalking, or at least Klaus assumed that she wouldn’t be this blasé about walking around in just her undergarments if she were awake. 

“Should we wake her?” Judy asked. 

Klaus shook his head. “If she starts to actively endanger herself, sure. Otherwise, I want to see what happens.” 

The two constructs of the Heterodyne Boys, one construct of the Old Heterodynes, and one construct of a house tasked with keeping the Heterodynes in check watched in silence as the newest Heterodyne, still heterodyning, crossed the room and made her way to the impromptu workbench. She reached into a pocket of her greatcoat, which was draped over the back of a chair, and pulled out... well, nobody was quite sure what it was, but it most closely resembled an oversized pocket watch. Klaus winced a bit as Agatha pulled his mini-toolkit from his work area into hers for her own use, but she quickly demonstrated that even in her sleep she was capable of both using and respecting the tools at hand, even setting her screws into a small bowl so that she would be able to find them later. As she worked, it became clear that her project was some variety of miniature clank; Klaus could easily envision situations where such things might be useful, but most of them relied on the smaller entities to have some idea what they were doing. It was one reason he appreciated Susa’s contributions to the Empire’s intelligence services. 

“Dis iz de calmest breaktrough Hy haff ever seen,” Jorgi murmured, “und Hy haz seen a lot ov dem.” 

Klaus nodded. “We get enough breakthroughs on Castle Wulfenbach that I’ve been looking for ways to make it less violent. There might be something we can use from this, but I’m not too sure about the side effects.” He glanced at Agatha, still humming away, seemingly completely oblivious to the world around her, and added, “Or whether it would work on a non-Heterodyne.” 

* * *

The following morning, Klaus arrived at Clay Mechanical with his son, his secretary, and the Jäger unit commander from the day before. Agatha let them in, and they congregated in the living room with the Clays themselves. After the requisite round of introductions, the topic of discussion shifted to the obvious one: now that we know Agatha Heterodyne exists, what do we do with that information? 

“If the Other’s plans involved endangering Agatha,” Gilgamesh suggested, demonstrating that he had in fact read the briefing Boris had given him, “is there some way we can protect her?” 

“She vill be safest in Mechanicsburg,” Jorgi replied. “Iz de hole point of de town. Und iz hers.” 

“Not yet,” Boris noted. “Until and unless the treaty is replaced, Mechanicsburg is still a part of the Empire.” 

Jorgi rolled his eyes. “Mechanicsburg iz hers. De Jägerkin iz hers. As soon as dey find out—” 

“That actually touches on a point I wanted to discuss,” Klaus cut in. “I think you’re correct that in the long term, the Lady Heterodyne would be safest in Mechanicsburg with the might of the Jägers to protect her, but even the fastest way to do that cleanly would take some time. Until that happens, I would prefer to keep the existence of a living Heterodyne a secret from everyone who does not need to know, so as to minimize the opportunities for any surviving co-conspirators of the Other to get to her or alter their plans.” 

“And how do you propose to do that?” Judy asked. “I think we trust you more than we did two days ago, but that’s not exactly a high bar to clear.” 

Klaus looked at her. “I think you’re going to need to trust me for this one,” he said. “You don’t have Beetle’s protection anymore, and I doubt you’ll be able to hide Agatha’s Spark on your own.” 

“Maybe if she puts the locket back on—” 

“Absolutely not,” Agatha snapped, Sparky harmonics clearly audible. 

Klaus shrugged. “You see?” 

“I would, however,” Agatha continued in a less charged but still commanding voice, “like to know what the actual suggestion is.” 

Klaus couldn’t very well fault her for that, as she’d be the one who had to experience it. “I think you should come up and complete your breakthrough on Castle Wulfenbach. Not only does the Castle’s school and staff have extensive experience with Spark breakthroughs and a very high survival rate for those Sparks”—Gil nodded—“but I’m sure the Jägergenerals would dearly love to meet you”—Jorgi nodded—“we could begin the process of renegotiating Mechanicsburg’s treaties with the Empire”—Boris nodded—“and I would get to ensure to my own satisfaction that you know everything you would need to about running a town, even one as... unique... as that one.” 

Agatha raised an eyebrow at that. “I _was_ Dr. Beetle’s secretary for a couple of years. I think I picked up a non-negligible amount about municipal governance.” 

“The same Dr. Beetle who was preparing to unleash a hive engine on his town?” Klaus asked. 

“...yes.” 

Klaus turned to Punch and Judy. “Would it make you feel better if I gave you free run of Castle Wulfenbach? You could see what I have and haven’t been doing with Othertech, if that’s your concern, since we’re going to be bringing up Beetle’s hive engine. I’ll even let you on the research team if you’d like.” 

The two married constructs held a brief silent conversation. Klaus could probably guess what it was about: if he was going to dare them to call his bluff like that, then either he really wasn’t bluffing or he thought he could no-witnesses them if they found something incriminating. 

“I think I’d be more comfortable if I knew you were on board,” said Agatha. “I’ll go either way, but knowing there’s someone I can turn to if things get to be too much might help.” 

Punch and Judy looked at each other one more time, then nodded. “If you’re trying to keep Agatha a secret,” Judy said, turning to Klaus, “you probably shouldn’t publicly call us Punch and Judy. We’ve been Adam and Lilith Clay for twenty-odd years now. Use those names, nobody will connect the dots.” A faint look of disgust crossed her face as she muttered, “Especially since those _stories_ have him speaking...” 

“Then it’s decided?” Klaus asked, and got a round of confirmations. “Excellent.” 


End file.
